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https://pilotonline.com/news/local/crime/article_8dc2ac02-fe54-11e8-846d-dba734ca5418.html

Langley Air Force Base secretary faked payroll for 17 years, giving herself an extra $1.46 million

A former employee at Langley Air Force Base admitted Wednesday that she bilked the federal government out of $1.46 million — mainly by faking the amount of overtime she worked over 17 years.

Michelle M. Holt, 52, was a civilian secretary at the base, where she worked in the communications support squadron of Air Combat Command.

She pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Newport News to felony charges that she undertook a long-running effort to boost her own pay.

Between December 2001 and July 2018, Holt falsely claimed 42,847 overtime hours that she didn’t work, according to a statement of facts that Holt, her lawyer and prosecutors signed off on Wednesday as part of the plea deal.

The ruse began slowly at first.

In late 2001, Holt used a co-worker’s log-in information — without that co-worker’s knowledge — to get into a Department of Defense computerized pay database. She retroactively added 15 hours of overtime to her paycheck.

As time went on, Holt’s retroactive additions to her overtime “became a regular occurrence,” the statement said. She began to get bolder, particularly after 2008 — when her overtime pay began to double her regular salary.

In 2017, for example, Holt’s salary was $51,324. But she took home $119,585 in overtime pay.

In one two-week period, the statement said, she billed the Air Force for 137 overtime hours that she didn’t work. Though overtime was by far the bulk of the scheme, she also falsified holiday and sick pay.

But things began to unravel in June, when the Department of Defense’s Inspector General’s Office found discrepancies between Holt’s pay and attendance records.

She appeared to get wind that an investigation was afoot. Holt wrote to a co-worker on June 18: “Please keep this between us, have you all had (the Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations) come over here about anything?”